Ohayo Bento!

Everyday bentos from an everyday girl :)

I need a do-over for last week. After spending four days on jury duty and the other three going to a family funeral, I’m ready to forget the whole week even happened and start fresh! To start this Monday off on the right foot, I made a brunch bento with breakfast sausages that I wrapped in a thin omelette (the same way you would make tamagoyaki but with a sausage in the middle). These eggs are super tasty! They’re from my Aunt and Uncle’s chickens :) The rest of the brunch bento is a small grape and pineapple fruit cup, steamed broccoli, and strips of a sweet bell pepper.

Mmmmmm brunch! Who doesn’t like brunch? I got inspired to make a brunch bento by a rerun of How I Met Your Mother where they were talking about how awesome brunch is. Apparently it really got to me because next thing I knew I was making a brunch bento. :)

Do you see that sweet little pear in the top right corner? Isn’t he cute?!?! I found these little seckel pears over the weekend and they’re perfect for bento. I needed to make this bento really quick this morning, so I couldn’t do much cooking. In my smallest pan I made some tamagoyaki (rolled omelette) with colby jack cheese, quickly rinsed the pan, then sauteed some butternut squash. Everything else only needed to be washed and sliced.

Every year Bento & Co. holds a bento contest and this year it was worldwide! You could make a bento out of anything but it had to have at least two onigiri. All in all there were over 200 entries! The top 10 were chosen and now they’re up for vote! If you get a minute go and cast your vote :).

I entered this teriyaki chicken bento but was not chosen as a top 10 finalist. The entries that they chose are amazing and they definitely made the right choices. I was blown away by the quality of the bento photos submitted! Wow! Next year... it’s all about next year ^_^ I’ve got to step up my game! But, in the meantime, I now have a gorgeous bento to share with you guys! Yay!

Along with the teriyaki chicken I have two onigiri (one stuffed with miso and the other with umeboshi), green onion tamagoyaki, cheese, multi-colored radish slices, cherries, cucumber, tomatoes, sugar snaps, broccoli, and a carrot flower.

I know these pickles look a little strange (bottom of container on the right) but they are heaven! I have almost perfected my pickle recipe. As soon as I give it a few more tries I’ll share all of the nitty gritty details with you. The pinkish color comes from the use of ume vinegar. Ume vinegar is the vinegar leftover from making umeboshi (pickled plums). It’s intensely salty and has a very unique flavor. To make these pickles I’m using a combination of ume vinegar, seasoned rice vinegar, and red shiso leaves. I can’t get enough of them!

I was very tempted to just eat pickles for lunch but I forced myself to pack some other food. I wasn’t really in the mood to cook, after all it was 6AM, so I made the simplest thing I could think of, tamagoyaki with cheddar cheese. It got a little browner than I like but, as I said, it was 6AM. I filled the rest of the bento with corn on the cob, a radish, steamed colorful carrots, a mini Babybel cheese, and blueberries.

I finally sent out my first newsletter! Yay! Yeah, I know, I’m a nerd. ^_^ If you’d like to start getting them the sign-up box is over on the right. Also, I got in a few new bento boxes and posted them up in the store. They’re perfect for a summer picnic!

Happy Monday! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. I had one myself because I was lucky enough to attend TECHMunch in Tampa on Saturday. I’ll talk more about it later, but I had a great time and got to meet some amazing people.

Poor old Hubs was going to end up with just a ham sandwich for lunch today. As I was staring at the sandwich and bag of chips my guilt kicked in. Next thing you know I’m over at the stove cooking up a tamagoyaki with cheddar cheese in one pan and zucchini in another. He still got the ham sandwich, but he also got this snack bento instead of a bag of potato chips.

Hubs and I were overdue for some good fried rice and stir-fry. Mmmmm comfort food! The stir-fry has chicken, lotus root, mushrooms, onions, and zucchini and the fried rice has onion, carrots, peas, corn, and scrambled egg.

Speaking of scrambled egg, I made another tamagoyaki. This one was a bit more difficult because I added a layer of ham and it made it a little tough to get the roll going. But, it turned out pretty and delicious in the end. I filled up the rest of the Lunchbots Eco with caprese salad, a Mini Babybel cheese, and orange wedges.

I don’t remember what it was that I saw, but something made me want to make a tomatillo salsa yesterday. By the time I got to the grocery store it had morphed into a mango/avocado salsa with tomatillos, lol.

Getting these groceries was quite an experience. See, my mom is highly allergic to the oils in the skin of a mango. It’s not a food allergy, more of a poison ivy type skin allergy. So I was trained from a very young age to not touch the mangos in the store! For that matter, don’t touch anything next to the mangos in the store!

Poison ivy, holly trees, and all of the other plants that really effect my mom have never bothered me, so I was pretty sure I wasn’t allergic to mango.

I am so well trained at “Don’t touch the mangos” that there I was at the mango counter leaning over them and bending every which way, so that I could get a good look at which one I wanted... without picking it up. Lol!

I finally realized I was being absolutely crazy and people were starting to give me “those” looks. I held my breath, picked my mango, put it in my basket, and my heart was racing as if I just ran to the car.

I actually called my mom from the store to congratulate her on the effectiveness of her lifelong training and she laughed at me... I think she’s still laughing at me, lol!

I cut up the mango yesterday, so according to the mango allergy queen, I should find out sometime around tomorrow if I’m allergic. *crossing fingers*

The salsa turned out fantastic! This is my first time having fresh mango, wow that’s good stuff! The salsa was actually a lot better than I thought it would be. I think I found a new kitchen staple. I didn’t even put it on my tacos, just ate it by itself.

Here’s what I put in the salsa, all chopped: 1 mango, 2 tomatillos, 1 avocado, 1 plum tomato, a few nice sprigs of cilantro, and 1/2 of a lime squeezed and I pulled most of the leftover pulp out and threw it in too. Oh, and some salt. I cut everything up, put it in a bowl, and mixed it as gently as I could with my hands because I didn’t want to smoosh the avocado.

It was so good!

Hubs’ bento today is leftover yellow rice with taco meat and cheese, the mango salsa, kiwi, and grapes. I packed it in the Lunchbots Eco. Speaking of Lunchbots, there are some Lunchbots in the #Bento4Japan charity auctions! Go check them out!!

I was so excited about the new tamagoyaki pans so I made my first one yesterday. Then I completely forgot to put it in the bento! Go figure, right? I made this one using inspiration from Lia over at Bentolicious. I cooked 4 different egg sheets seperately, layered them on top of each other, then rolled it up. Awesome! The picture turned out really yellow, but I was too tired to shoot it again ^_^